Summer Post #3

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423253/assisted-suicide-ethics-debate

A lot of debate has been going on about whether it is ethical to let dying patients “kill themselves” before potential death. Often those patients are at the last couple years, months, even weeks of their life and they are aware of that. They also know the price that comes with attempting to live for that long or longer. It mostly includes unbearable pain such as migraines and epileptic seizures. The patients know they’re most likely going to lose control over basic functions such as eyesight, the ability to talk or communicate and paralysis ranging from the lower body, one side of the body to the entire body. Also the treatments that they may have to undergo could be extremely expensive, slow and ineffective and harm their family financially. The time that they have left to live would be excruciatingly painful and simply not worth it in their eyes. Patients of this sort often do have a family they are an integral part of such as being a sibling or parent, and are often concerned about their loved ones seeing them suffer and possibly adopt mental issues (ptsd). At this point in their lives they most likely have come to peace with the idea of death, viewing it as a relief of their hardship. They shift their priorities unto people that they care about. Making a decision as such should not be supported, as it is considered to be wrong to take your own life, as it would be considered as suicide. It will raise many questions of what If’s amongst doctors and families but the actual patient in this situation doesn’t have the time/strength/money to ponder on this. They can only follow what their body tells them and in doing so, chose to act on it. Taking that right away from the patient will lead to them trying to find other ways to kill themselves, up to a point where they may hire someone to do it, placing the responsibility on someone else’s shoulder. The patient would be forced to endure the pain furthermore or take part in the treatment that the family was “forced” to pay for by the doctor and end up most probably dying a slower more painful for everyone death. Yet technically a person never knows what life can bring him, as it is all up to fate and killing themselves would be interfering with fate, thus allowing such acts should not be tolerated.